IM David Pruess won his second GM norm at the Rohde Open in Sautron, France. (October 26-November 3) You can read about his first norm from Capelle Le Grande , in an article by his friend, fellow Samford Scholar and travel partner Josh Friedel. Josh and David travelled again together, this for the Bad Wiessee tournament, which begins tomorrow. In fact, it was a bit of a happy accident that David entered the Rohde Open. "We wanted to play in second tournament to make the plane ticket a bit more cost effective," David said.

"In general the level of my games was quite so-so, but there was one moment I was very happy with in my last round with IM Peter Vavrak." (David needed to win this game to tie for first and to earn his GM norm.)

Position after 36. h4

I was down to a
few minutes myself now, and had to figure out how to defend my king. This moment meant a lot to me because I have had similar
situations in the past, where I was trying to supress an attack or
counterplay against my king while in time trouble. My historical
performance is very bad. Here I used my last few minutes, and came up
with 36...Re4! which is very cool, and has some nice tactics to it. i had
seen various variations including the game continuation to move 40,
and by my standards that's quite good. also that got me to time
control, which gave me time to double check the rook ending after
41... Nxf2 42. Kxf2-- in fact, it is winning.

Here is the full game:

Annoying pairing

For the second time this fall, David Pruess was paired against Josh Friedel, his training partner. The first game was in Miami, where they drew after 35 moves in a Catalan.

Because they analyze openings together, it is very annoying for both of them to play each other. David said that sometimes he wished they could just play Fischer random chess! Because both Josh and David are fighting players, the quick draw idea is not a serious option. This game was a wild Leningrad Nimzo (which Josh and David had never studied together), fun for both sides. Instead of 31...Ne2+, Josh should have jumped at the opportunity to trade queens with 31...Qb1+. In ever increasing time pressure, Josh played 32...Kh7 which lost instantly to the nice move, 33.Qh4! If Josh had played 32...Bxf3 instead of Kh7, David was planning Qf2!

Josh had a break-even tournament in terms of rating scoring 6.5/9 with a final stretch of three wins in a row.